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In the first bilateral visit by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to India since he entered office in May last year, New Delhi and Canberra are looking to expand cooperation in defence, clean energy, education and economic spheres.
Albanese’s visit comes days after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to India last week, and 10 days before Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s visit between March 19 and 21.
Put together, this marks the visits by all the Quad member countries to India, days after the Foreign Ministers of the Quad grouping met in New Delhi last week.
While the visit by Albanese began with cricket diplomacy in Ahmedabad Thursday, officials said Australia will host military operations with India, Japan and the US in the ‘Malabar’ exercises off the coast of Perth in August.
Australia has also invited India to join the Talisman Sabre exercises later this year, a major operation for the Australian Defence Force.
For Australia, India is a top-tier security partner. The Indian Ocean is central to both countries’ security and prosperity. And there has never been a point in both our country’s histories where we have had such a strong strategic alignment.
We both depend on free and open access to sea lanes in the Indo-Pacific for our trade and economic well-being,” he said on board INS Vikrant.
‘Politically exposed persons’ brought under new PMLA rules, more disclosures for NGOs (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 2, Indian Polity)
Widening the ambit of reporting entities under money laundering provisions, the government has amended rules to incorporate more disclosures for non-governmental organisations and defined “politically exposed persons” (PEPs) under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) in line with the recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).
The move to define PEPs under PMLA is to bring uniformity with a 2008 circular of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for KYC norms/anti-money laundering standards for banks and financial institutions, which had defined PEPs in line with FATF norms, officials said.
The FATF is the global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog.
PEP has already been in the RBI’s master circular, in line with FATF. The definition has now been given in the PMLA rules so that the same definition is applicable everywhere.
The amendments assume significance ahead of the proposed FATF assessment of India, which is expected to be undertaken later this year.
India’s assessment is likely to come up for discussion in the plenary discussion in June, while the possible onsite assessment is slated for November.
Editorial
Undue Credits (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, Indian Polity)
All is not well with the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), the UGC-affiliated autonomous body that grades colleges and universities in the country.
On Sunday, its executive committee chairperson, Bhushan Patwardhan, resigned to “safeguard the sanctity” of the post to which he was appointed a little over a year earlier.
Patwardhan had been flagging irregularities in the Bengaluru-based agency’s functioning in the days leading to his resignation. In a letter to UGC Chairman M Jagadesh Kumar on February 26, Patwardhan suggested that “vested interests and malpractices” were instrumental in some educational institutions obtaining “questionable grades”.
A panel constituted by Patwardhan to review the Council’s working, last year, had raised similar concerns. Its report, submitted to the UGC in September 2022, pointed out that “nearly 70 per cent of experts from the pool of assessors did not appear to have received any opportunity to conduct site visits while some others have had multiple such visits”.
A thorough investigation was required to remove the panel’s misgivings about “conflict of interest” in the assessment process. But the higher education regulator did not act on this report.
The NAAC relies heavily on self-assessment by applicant institutions. An applicant institution submits a self-evaluation report, which is then validated by NAAC expert teams, followed by peer team visits to the institutions.
The last step has sparked controversy in the past. In September last year, this newspaper reported that the accreditation agency had withheld the grading of the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda after receiving a tip-off that its peer review team had been bribed.
The NAAC dismissed the allegations and released MS University’s scores. The controversy had surfaced at a time when the Council was holding internal conversations on the peer review system.
A White Paper published by the agency on July 13, 2022, noted that, “The process of peer team visits adds substantial effort on the part of both NAAC and the higher educational institutions (HEI)”.
Making of a destination (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 3, Indian Economy)
As one of the fastest-emerging tourist destinations in the world, India’s travel and tourism sector will be the key axis of development in the coming years. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s reiteration of the importance of tourism in driving growth in the Budget Session is a testimony to the immense possibilities of the sector.
Budget 2023, at the beginning of Amrit Kaal or the period of intense robust growth, has outlined the path to developing tourism in mission mode.
India’s G20 presidency together with Prime Minister Modi’s vision to develop 50 destinations across the country has provided the right fillip to the tourism sector and is certain to dramatically improve India’s global ranking on the World Economic Forum’s Travel & Tourism Development Index.
There is a clear tilt towards collective action by industry stakeholders and the government to shape an ever-brighter future for the sector — that’s a pillar of development, accounting for 10 per cent of the total employment directly, and providing 8 per cent of the overall GDP.
The basic premise for the central government’s push on tourism is an acknowledgement of the fact that the travel and tourism sector needs multiple means of support to prop it up.
The Union budget has listed six themes for the development of the sector — convergence, public-private participation, creativity, innovation, digitisation and development of destinations.
Ideas Page
Taking from the poor and give it to the rich (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 3, Indian Economy)
Most governments, regardless of their ideology, implement policies that redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor in varying degrees.
It is in this regard that I find the recent proposals in favour of the return to the Old Pension System (OPS) the most puzzling.
For the uninitiated, the OPS is a “pay-as-you-go” scheme where the contributions of current government employees are used to fund the pension liabilities of past government employees.
In contrast, the New Pension Scheme, or the National Pension System (NPS) — established by the NDA government in 2003 — is a defined contribution scheme where the employees invest a certain fraction of their salary that is complemented by a contribution from the government. In OPS, the employees are guaranteed an amount equivalent to 50 per cent of their last salary in perpetuity.
It is not difficult to imagine the vastly different fiscal implications the two policies entail. With rising lifespans, the only way the OPS can be made sustainable is by either having more government employees — and therefore its associated inefficiencies — or by progressively borrowing more.
The days after Women’s Day (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 1, Social Issues)
Gender empowerment has been a popular theme in India and some tangible policy decisions have indeed been made. Encouraging women to don the uniform is one such initiative.
Most states and Union Territories in India have reservation for women in police and as per data released by the Bureau of Police Research & Development, they are now around 10.49 per cent of the strength of the total police force in the country (2021).
The uniform has been a powerful symbol in a society that has relegated its girls to a secondary position. However, the rise has been only on the surface.
Scratch it and the tendency seen in recent cases of murder of Shraddha Walkar, Nikki Yadav and Megha Torvi continues unabated. All this, while we routinely celebrate “Women’s Day” in different forums.
This is not to undervalue the idea of inducting women in police, paramilitary and armed forces but to suggest that much more is needed to enable them to fulfil their full potential and for the community to gain from their presence.
One had thought that women in uniform would send a strong positive signal but the ground reality continues to be bleak. Crime against women is very high with abysmal rate of conviction.
Public spaces are still unsafe, especially after dark, curtailing their free movement and thus adversely affecting their working hours and employment avenues.
Explained
The India-Australia relationship (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
After a visit to the cricket stadium in Ahmedabad with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese tweeted about the fierce but friendly sporting rivalry between the two nations.
“At the heart of this contest is genuine respect, reflecting the affection and friendship between our peoples…On the field, Australia and India are competing to be the best in the world.
Off the field, we are co-operating to build a better world,” Albanese, the first leader of his country to make a bilateral visit to India since Malcolm Turnbull in 2017, posted.
The India-Australia bilateral relationship has been underpinned by the shared values of pluralistic, Westminster-style democracies, Commonwealth traditions, expanding economic engagement, and increasing high-level interaction.
Several common traits, including strong, vibrant, secular, and multicultural democracies, a free press, an independent judicial system, and English language, serve as the foundation for closer co-operation and multifaceted interaction between the two countries.
The end of the Cold War and beginning of India’s economic reforms in 1991 provided the impetus for the development of closer ties between the two nations.
The ever-increasing numbers of Indian students travelling to Australia for higher education, and the growing tourism and sporting links, have played a significant role in strengthening bilateral relations.
Why European Space Agency thinks its time moon may get its own time (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 3, Space)
Since the dawn of the Space Age, the answer has been: It depends. For decades, lunar missions have operated on the time of the country that launched them.
But with several lunar explorations heading for the launchpad, the European Space Agency has deemed the current system unsustainable.
ESA is not taking the lead on this discussion; we’re just putting a finger on a problem we need to tackle,” said Brice Dellandrea, an engineer with the ESA. “But this is the kind of topic that needs international coordination and consensus.”
The main objective of establishing a universal timekeeping system for the moon, the ESA said, is to streamline contact among the various countries and entities, public and private, that are coordinating trips to and around the moon.
The discussion about how to do that is happening as things are starting to get busy on and above the lunar surface.